ellaire. He may be afraid of Mr. Pike, and he is a
murderer; but at any rate he has no fear of the supernatural. With two
men above him in authority, although it was his watch, there was no call
for him to do anything. He swayed back and forth in balance to the
violent motions of the _Elsinore_ and looked on with eyes that were
amused and cynical.

"What does the devil look like, my man?" Captain West asked.

Bert Rhine grinned sheepishly.

"Answer the captain!" Mr. Pike snarled at him.

Oh, it was murder, sheer murder, that leapt into the gangster's eyes for
the instant, in acknowledgment of the snarl. Then he replied to Captain
West:

"I didn't wait to see, sir. But it's one whale of a devil."

"He's as big as a elephant, sir," volunteered Bill Quigley. "I seen'm
face to face, sir. He almost got me when I run out of the fo'c's'le."

"Oh, Lord, sir!" Larry moaned. "The way he hit the house, sir. It was
the call to Judgment."

"Your theology is mixed, my man," Captain West smiled quietly, though I
could not help seeing how tired was his face and how tired were his
wonderful Samurai eyes.

He turned to the mate.

"Mr. Pike, will you please go for'ard and interview this devil? Fasten
him up and tie him down and I'll take a look at him in the morning."

"Yes, sir," said Mr. Pike; and Kipling's line came to me:

"Woman, Man, or God or Devil, was there anything we feared?"

And as I went for'ard through the wall of darkness after Mr. Pike and Mr.
Mellaire along the freezing, slender, sea-swept bridge--not a sailor
dared to accompany us--other lines of "The Galley Slave" drifted through
my brain, such as:

"Our bulkheads bulged with cotton and our masts were stepped in gold--
We ran a mighty merchandise of niggers in the hold. . . "

And:

"By the brand upon my shoulder, by the gall of clinging steel,
By the welts the whips have left me, by the scars that never heal . . . "

And:

"Battered chain-gangs of the orlop, grizzled draughts of years gone by
. . . "

And I caught my great, radiant vision of Mr. Pike, galley slave of the
race, and a driver of men under men greater than he; the faithful
henchman, the able sailorman, battered and grizzled, branded and galled,
the servant of the sweep-head that made mastery of the sea. I know him
now. He can never again offend me. I forgive him everything--the
whiskey raw on his breath the day I came aboard at Baltimore, his
moro